Many television sets provide multi-window capabilities that allow more than one signal to be displayed at once on the television screen. The multi-window capabilities include picture-in-picture (PIP), picture-and-picture (PAP), and picture-outside-picture (POP) capabilities. The PIP capability allows more than one signal to be displayed at once but only one signal is displayed on the main display area of the television screen at any one time. Others are displayed in secondary display areas. The PAP capability allows more than one signal to be displayed on the main display area. On the other hand, the POP capability allows one signal to be displayed on the main display area (4:3) of a wide-screen (16:9) television, and others on the unused areas around the main display area. As used herein, each display area is called a display window or simply a window.
Each window normally requires a different set of channel changing keys for changing the channel displayed in that window. For example, a television apparatus supporting PIP capabilities would require a remote control having a set of channel changing keys for the main window and a different set for the PIP window. Furthermore, even though some television sets allow PIP windows to share a set of number keys with main windows, a key, other than the PIP key for displaying PIP windows, must be dedicated to toggle the channel control between the main windows and the PIP windows. Thus, in either approach, one or more additional keys are needed in order to change channel in PIP windows.
It is well known that new capabilities and functionalities such as electronic programming guides and Internet access have been incorporated into a television apparatus. These new capabilities and functionalities often require more control keys in a remote control. Thus, there is also a need to reduce the number of keys in a remote control to leave more space for incorporating these additional keys.